Following the release of a major game update, PC players now also benefit from the addition of NVIDIA’s brand new DirectX 11, tessellated HairWorks technology, and the addition of GPU-accelerated NVIDIA PhysX effects.

Traditionally, fur and hair in games is created by adding polygon strips and transparent textures to a character. Though this is a simple and cheap implementation, the resulting fur and hair appears completely static and visually uninteresting. With dynamic fur and hair, hundreds of thousands of hair strands can be added to characters, each reacting realistically to a character’s movements and external forces. These dynamic hairs also allow for richer color gradients, and interact with light and shadows more naturally than was previously possible. World and local lighting permeates through each layer, with the deepest layers being naturally shadowed, significantly improving image quality.

In Call of Duty: Ghosts, our DX Compute, DirectX 11, tessellated, platform agnostic NVIDIA HairWorks solution adds dynamic volume in place of static meshes comprised solely of detailed textures. In a single-player mission, where the protagonist’s dog is seen without body armor, 470,000 individual hairs are rendered simultaneously to create an accurate, realistic simulation of a German Shepherd. And in a separate level, the protagonist carries the German Shepherd, enabling us to demonstrate even higher densities of fur on the portions of the dog still visible.

The result of years of research and development, consolidated into an easy to use, all-in-one SDK, NVIDIA HairWorks will enable the realistic rendering of human characters with dynamic hair in future games, in addition to the rendering of alien creatures, grass, and other environmental features. Each effect is easily generated with the included shape preservation, anti-stretching, dynamic force, dynamic inertia, and GPU skinning features, and can be quickly customized for any gameplay scenario.

As part of our wider NVIDIA GameWorks toolset, NVIDIA Hairworks is just one of the many ways we’re working to enhance and improve PC games and game development. In 2014 you’ll see further uses of NVIDIA Hairworks, along with new uses of PhysX, in addition to other innovative NVIDIA GameWorks features. For the first details on each, make sure to stay tuned to GeForce.com. For more on Call of Duty: Ghosts, check out our Call of Duty: Ghosts Graphics & Performance Guide.